Fast-Food Workers Strike In 5th Major City

As a cook for Pizza Hut in Milwaukee, DeAngelo Coleman would never want to jeopardize his job. "I love the work I do," says the 28-year-old. But there he was, risking his $8-an-hour job on the picket line Wednesday as he protested along with some 200 other Milwaukee fast-food workers. The goal: To raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. "I feel like these millionaires [who run the chain] are stealing," he says.

Milwaukee on Wednesday became the fifth major U.S. city to have a fast-food workers' strike, and Coleman (pictured above, holding a megaphone) said that he was inspired to join it because of the Chicago walkout in April. "Seeing people come together really hit me," says Coleman, who attended the Chicago rally as a guest of Wisconsin Jobs Now, a nonprofit organization campaigning to increase workers' wages. Hundreds of fast-food workers also have participated in one-day strikes in Detroit and St. Louis, after protests began in New York in November.

Coleman currently has no benefits at his job and is trying to support four children, with another expected to arrive in August. (His oldest two live with his first wife in Milwaukee, and he lives with his pregnant fiancee and her two children from a prior relationship.) "Eight dollars an hour would be a struggle if I had just one child on the way," he says, but with four, it's nearly impossible.